have disclosed a project for forming a Christian republic. The proposal
is stated to have been, to divide Europe into fifteen fixed powers, none
of which should be allowed to make any new acquisition, but should
together form an association for maintaining a mutual balance, and
preserving peace. This political reverie, impossible to be realized, is
not likely ever to have been actually divulged, even if meditated by
Henry, nor is there any trace of it to be found in the history, or among
the state papers of England, Venice, or Holland, the supposed
co-operators in the scheme. His more rational design in arming went no
further than to set bounds to the ambition and power of the house of
Austria, both in Germany and Italy. His warlike preparations have,
however, been ascribed to his prevailing weakness, in an infatuated
passion for the Princess of Condé. Whatever may have been the motive,
his means of success were imposing. He was to march into Germany at the
head of forty thousand excellent troops. The army, provisions, and every
other necessary were in readiness. Money no longer failed; Sully had
laid up forty millions of livres in the treasury, which were destined
for this war. His alliances were already assured, his generals had been
formed by himself, and all seemed to forebode such a storm, as must
probably have overwhelmed an emperor devoted to the search after the
philosopher’s stone, and a king of Spain under the dominion of the
inquisition. Henry was impatient to join his army; but his mind had
become harassed with sinister forebodings, and his chagrin was increased
by a temporary alienation from his faithful minister. He was in his way
to pay a visit of reconciliation to Sully, when his coach was entangled
as it passed along a street. His attendants left the carriage to remove
the obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the
heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angoulême. This calamitous event
took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The
Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe, were
supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of implicating other
powers, and plunging France into greater evils than those from which
their hero had rescued them, deterred not only statesmen, but even the
judges on Ravaillac’s trial, from pressing for the names of accomplices.
Hardouin de Perefixe, in his History of Henry the Great, says, “If it be
asked who inspired the monster with the thought? History answers that
she does not know; and that in so mysterious an affair, it is not
allowable to vent suspicions and conjectures as assured truths; that
even the judges who conducted the examinations opened not their mouths,
and spoke only with their shoulders.” There were seven courtiers in the
coach when the murder took place; and the Marshal d’Estrées, in his
History of the Regency of Mary de Medicis, says that the Duke d’Epernon
and the Marquis de Verneuil were accused by a female servant of the
latter, of having been privy to the design; but that, having failed to
verify her charge before the Parliament, she was condemned to perpetual
imprisonment between four walls. The circumstance that Ravaillac was of
Angoulême, which was the Duke’s government, gave some plausibility to
the suspicion. It was further whispered, that the first blow was not
mortal; but that the Duke stooped to give facility to the assassin, and
that he aimed a second which reached the King’s heart. But these rumours
passed off, without fixing any well-grounded and lasting imputation on
that eminent person’s character.
The assertions of Ravaillac, as far as they have any weight,
discountenance the belief of an extended political conspiracy. The house
of Austria, Mary de Medicis his wife, Henrietta d’Entragues his
mistress, as well as the Duke d’Epernon, have been subjected to the
hateful conjectures of Mazarin and other historians; but he who actually
struck the blow invariably affirmed that he had no accomplice, and that
he was carried forward by an uncontrollable instinct. If his mind were
at all acted on from without, it was probably by the epidemic fanaticism
of the times, rather than by personal influence.
Henry left three sons and three daughters by Mary de Medicis.
Of no prince recorded in history, probably, are so many personal
anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well
known, and of easy access. The whole tenor of Henry’s life exhibits a
lofty, generous, and forgiving temper, the fearless spirit which loves
the excitement of danger, and that suavity of feeling and manners,
which, above all qualities, wins the affections of those who come within
its sphere: it does not exhibit high moral or religious principle. But
his weaknesses were those which the world most readily pardons,
especially in a great man. If Henry had emulated the pure morals and
fervent piety of his noble ancestor Louis IX., he would have been a far
better king, as well as a better man; yet we doubt whether in that case,
his memory would then have been cherished with such enthusiastic
attachment by his countrymen.
[Illustration: Marriage of Henry IV. and Mary de Medicis, from the
Picture by Rubens.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._
BENTLEY.
_From a Picture by Hudson,
in Trinity College, Cambridge._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
[Illustration]
BENTLEY.
Richard Bentley was the son, not of a low mechanic, as the earlier
narratives of his life assert, but of a respectable yeoman, possessed of
a small estate. That fact has been established by his latest and most
accurate, as well as most copious biographer, Dr. Monk, now Bishop of
Gloucester. Bentley was born in Yorkshire, January 27, 1661–2, at
Oulton, near Wakefield; and educated at Wakefield school, and St. John’s
College, Cambridge, where he pursued his studies with unwearied
industry. No fellowship to which he was eligible having fallen vacant,
he was appointed Master of Spalding school, in 1682; over which he had
presided only one year, when his critical learning recommended him to
Dr. Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul’s, as a private tutor for his
son. In 1689 he attended his pupil to Wadham College in Oxford, where he
was incorporated Master of Arts on the 4th of July in that year, having
previously taken that degree in his own university. Soon after the
promotion of Stillingfleet to the see of Worcester, Bentley was made
domestic chaplain to that learned prelate, with whom he continued on the
terms of confidential intimacy incident to that connexion, till his
Lordship’s death. Dr. William Lloyd, at that time Bishop of Lichfield,
was equally alive to the uncommon merit of this rising scholar; and his
two patrons concurrently recommended him as a fit person to open the
lectures founded by the celebrated Robert Boyle, in defence of natural
and revealed religion. Bentley had before this time embarked largely in
literary pursuits. Among these we can only stop to mention his
criticisms on the historiographer Malelas, contained in a letter
appended to Dr. Mill’s edition of that author, which stamped his
reputation as a first-rate scholar, especially among the learned men of
the Continent.
The delivery of the first course of Boyle’s Lectures, in 1692, gave
Bentley an admirable opportunity of establishing his reputation as a
divine; and he taxed his abilities to the utmost to ensure success. Sir
Isaac Newton’s Principia had not been published more than six years: the
sublime discoveries of the author were little known, and less
understood, from the general prejudice against any new theory, and the
difficulty of comprehending the deep reasonings on which this one
rested. Bentley determined to spare no pains in laying open this new
philosophy of the solar system in a popular form, and in displaying to
the best advantage the cogent arguments in behalf of the existence of a
Deity, furnished by that masterly work. That nothing might be wanting to
his design, he applied to the author, and received from him the solution
of some difficulties. This gave rise to a curious and important
correspondence; and there is a manuscript in Newton’s own hand preserved
among Bentley’s papers, containing directions respecting the books to be
read as a preparation for the perusal of his Principia. Newton’s four
letters on this subject are preserved in Trinity College Library, and
have been given to the public in the form of a pamphlet. The lecturer
did not neglect, in addition to the popular illustration of the
Principia, to corroborate his argument by considerations drawn from
Locke’s doctrine, that the notion of a Deity is not innate. The sermons
were received with loud and universal applause, and the highest opinion
of the preacher’s abilities was entertained by the learned world.
Bentley soon reaped the fruits of his high reputation, being appointed
to a stall at Worcester in October, 1692, and made Keeper of the King’s
Library in the following year. In 1694 he was again appointed to preach
Boyle’s lecture. His subject was a defence of Christianity against the
objections of infidels. These sermons have never been published; nor
have Dr. Monk’s researches enabled him to ascertain where they are now
deposited.
Bentley was scarcely settled in his office of librarian, when he became
involved in a quarrel with the Hon. Charles Boyle, brother to the Earl
of Ossory, who was then in the course of his education at Christ Church
in Oxford, and had carried thither a more than ordinary share of
classical knowledge, and a decided taste for literary pursuits. Mr.
Boyle had been selected by his college to edit a new edition of the
Epistles of Phalaris; and for that purpose, not by direct application,
but through the medium of a blundering and ill-mannered bookseller, he
had procured the use of a manuscript copy of the Epistles from the
Library at St. James’s. The responsibility attendant on the custody of
manuscripts, and perhaps some disgust at the channel through which the
loan was negotiated, occasioned the librarian to demand restitution
before the collation was finished. A notion was entertained at Christ
Church, that an affront was intended both to the Epistles, which Bentley
had already pronounced to be a clumsy forgery of later times, and to the
advocates of their genuineness. Tory politics had probably some share in
exasperating a quarrel with a scholar in the opposite interest. Be this
as it may, the preface to Phalaris contained an offensive sentence,
which the editor would not, or perhaps could not cancel, as the copies
seem to have been delivered before the real state of the case was
explained; and this gave rise to the once celebrated controversy between
Boyle and Bentley. It produced a number of pieces written with learning,
wit, and spirit, on both sides; but Bentley fought single-handed, while
the tracts on the side of Boyle were clubbed by the wits of Christ
Church; for the reputed author was attending his parliamentary duty in
Ireland, while those enlisted under his colours were sustaining his
cause in the English republic of letters. Of the numerous attacks on
Bentley published at this period, Swift’s Battle of the Books is the
only one which continues to be known by the merit of the writing. The
controversy was prolonged to the year 1699, when Bentley’s enlarged
dissertation upon Phalaris appeared, and obtained so complete a victory
over his opponents, as to constitute an epoch not only in the writer’s
life, but in the history of literature. It is avowedly controversial;
but it contains a matchless treasure of knowledge, in history,
chronology, antiquities, philosophy, and criticism. The preface contains
his defence against the charges made on his personal character, his
vindication of which is satisfactory and triumphant. So strong, however,
are the prejudices of party and fashion, that many persons looked upon
the controversy as a field for a grand tournament of wit and learning,
exhibiting the prowess of the combatants without deciding the cause in
dispute; but all those whose judgment on such questions could be of any
value held the triumph of Dr. Bentley to be complete, both as to the
sterling merits of the case, and his able management of its discussion.
It was not long before the impression created in his favour became
manifest; for, in the course of the next year, 1700, Bentley was
appointed by the crown to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge.
On that high advancement he resigned his stall at Worcester. He was
afterwards collated to the Archdeaconry of Ely, in 1781, which, besides
conferring rank in the church, was endowed with two livings; and he was
appointed Chaplain both to King William and Queen Anne. There is a
tradition in Bentley’s family, that Bishop Stillingfleet said, “We must
send Bentley to rule the turbulent Fellows of Trinity College: if any
one can do it, he is the person; for he has ruled my family ever since
he entered it.”
Having thus attained to affluence and honour, he married a lady to whom
he had been long attached. The union was eminently happy. Mrs. Bentley’s
mind was highly cultivated; she was amiable and pious; and the
benevolence of her disposition availed to soften the animosity of
opponents at several critical periods of her husband’s life. His new
station was calculated to increase rather than to lessen the Master’s
taste for critical studies. As he occasionally gave the results of his
inquiries to the public, his labours, abounding in erudition and
sagacity, by degrees raised him to the reputation of being the first
critic of his age. Among the most remarkable of his numerous pieces, we
may mention a collection of the Fragments of Callimachus, with notes and
emendations, transmitted to Grævius, in whose edition of that poet’s
works they appeared in 1697; and three letters on the Plutus and the
Clouds of Aristophanes, written to Kuster, and by him dissected into the
form of notes, and published in his edition of that author. Copies of
two of the original epistles have fortunately been preserved, and given
to the world in the Museum Criticum, after more than a century. Kuster
had in a great measure destroyed their interest by omissions, and by
curtailing their amusing and digressive playfulness. But as they fell
from Bentley’s own pen, few of his writings exhibit more acuteness, or
more lively perception of the elegancies of the Greek tongue. About the
same time he produced one of the ablest and most perfect of his works,
his Emendations on the Fragments of Menander and Philemon. That piece
indicates rather intimate acquaintance with his subject, and a feeling
of security in his positions, than direct and immediate labour or
research. He wrote under the assumed name of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,
and sent the work to be printed and published on the Continent. Under
the same signature he appeared again in 1713, in his Reply to Collins’s
Discourse of Freethinking. His exposure of the sophistry and fallacies
pervading that book was judicious and highly effective; and for the
eminent service done to the Christian religion, and the clergy of
England in this work, by refuting the objections and exposing the
ignorance of the writers calling themselves Freethinkers, Dr. Bentley
received the public thanks of the University of Cambridge assembled in
senate, January 4, 1715. But his edition of Horace is the capital work,
which through good and evil report will associate his name with the
Latin language so long as it endures. He completed it in 1711. The tone
of the preface is arrogant and invidious: the presumption, which is the
great blot in his character, both as a man and a critic, is more
conspicuous in those few pages than in all his other productions. With
respect to the work itself, between seven and eight hundred changes in
the common readings were introduced into the text, contrary to the
established practice of classical editors. The language of the notes is
that of absolute dictatorship, not however without an award of fair
credit to some other commentators. His Latinity, although easy and
flowing, has been censured as by no means pure. Many of his readings
have been confirmed and adopted by the latest and best editors; others
are considered as either unnecessary, harsh, or prosaic: but, with all
its faults, Bentley’s Horace is a monument of inexhaustible learning;
the reader, whether convinced or not, adds to his stock of knowledge;
and the very errors of such a critic are instructive.
But Bentley’s haughty temper, thus displayed in his criticisms, burst
forth much more injuriously in the government of his college; where he
carried himself so loftily, and gave such serious and repeated offence,
that several of the Fellows exhibited a complaint against him before the
Bishop of Ely, as visitor. Their object was his removal from the
headship, in furtherance of which they charged him with embezzlement, in
having improperly applied large sums of money to his own use; and with
having adopted other unworthy and violent proceedings, to the
interruption of peace and harmony in the society. In answer to these
imputations he states his own case in a letter to the Bishop, which was
published in octavo in 1710, under the title of the Present State of
Trinity College. Such was the beginning of a long, inveterate, and
mischievous quarrel; which, after a continuance of more than twenty
years, ended in the Master’s favour. The Biographia Britannica, and the
Life of Bentley by the present Bishop of Gloucester, necessarily give a
detailed narrative of this dispute, during the progress of which several
books were written, with the most determined animosity on both sides. We
cannot in this instance regret the confined space, which prevents our
dilating on a quarrel, unfortunate in its origin, virulent in its
progress, and, in our opinion, especially discreditable to the Master.
Nor was this the only trial of a spirit sufficiently able to bear up
against the storms of opposition, and by obstinate perseverance to
triumph over its adversaries. During the course of the former dispute,
Bentley had been promoted to the Regius Professorship of Divinity.
George I. paid a visit to the university in October, 1717. It is usual
on such occasions to name several persons for a doctor’s degree in that
faculty by royal mandate; and the principal part of the ceremony
consists in what is called the creation, that is, the presentation of
the nominees to the Chancellor, if present, or to the Vice-Chancellor in
his absence, by the Professor. Bentley claimed a fee of four guineas as
due from each of the Doctors whom it was his office to create, in
addition to a broad-piece, which had been the ancient and customary
compliment. There were two gold coins under that denomination; a
Jacobus, worth twenty-five shillings, and a Carolus, passing for
twenty-three. Both were called in, and no gold pieces of that value have
since been coined. The Professor refused to create any doctor who would
not acquiesce in the fee. His arguments in favour of the claim were at
least plausible; but it ill became so high a functionary to interrupt
solemn proceedings, and sow discord in a learned body for a mercenary
and paltry consideration. From this low origin arose a long and warm
dispute, in the course of which the Master of Trinity and Regius
Professor was suspended from all his degrees, October 3, 1718, and
degraded on the seventeenth of that month. Of thirty Doctors present,
twenty-three voted for the degradation of their brother; and of ten
heads of colleges who attended all but one joined in the sentence. The
principal ground for these extraordinary measures will not appear very
strong to impartial posterity; it was an alleged contempt in speaking of
a regular meeting of the Heads of Houses, as “the Vice-Chancellor and
four or five of his friends over a bottle.” From this sentence Bentley
petitioned the King for relief: and the affair was referred to a
committee of the Privy Council, whence it was carried into the Court of
King’s Bench, where the four Judges declared their opinions _seriatim_
against the proceedings of the university; and a peremptory mandamus was
issued, February 7, 1724, after more than five years of undignified
altercation, charging the Chancellor, Masters, and scholars “to restore
Richard Bentley to all his degrees, and to every other right and
privilege of which they had deprived him.”
Happily both for himself and the learned world, Bentley was gifted with
a natural hardiness of temper, which enabled him to buffet against both
these storms; so that he continued to pursue his career of literature,
as if the elements had been undisturbed. November 5, 1715, he delivered
a sermon on popery from the university pulpit, distinguished by learning
and argument, and written in an original style, which compelled the
attention of the hearers, unlike those common-place and narcotic
declamations usually poured forth on that anniversary. It was printed,
and has incurred the strange fate of having been purloined by Sterne,
and introduced into Tristram Shandy. Part of it is read by Corporal
Trim, whose feelings are so overpowered by the description of the
Inquisition, that he declares “he would not read another line of it for
all the world.” The sermon had the common lot of Bentley’s publications;
it gave birth to a controversy. It was attacked in ‘Remarks’ by Cummins,
a Calvinistic dissenter. An answer was put forth with the following
title: ‘Reflections on the scandalous Aspersions on the Clergy, by the
author of the Remarks.’ It is asserted in more than one life of Bentley,
that he was himself the author of these Reflections; but the Bishop of
Gloucester says that no one can believe this who reads half a page of
the pamphlet. In 1716 Bentley had propounded the plan of a projected
edition of the Greek Testament, in a letter to the Archbishop of
Canterbury. He brooded over this design for four years, sparing neither
labour nor expense to procure the necessary materials. In 1720 he issued
proposals for printing it by subscription, together with the Latin
version of Jerome; to which proposals a specimen of the execution was
annexed. The proposals are printed at length in the Biographia
Britannica, and in Dr. Monk’s Life. They were virulently attacked by Dr.
Conyers Middleton, at that time a fellow of Trinity, and a leading
person in the opposition to the Master, in ‘Remarks’ on Bentley’s
proposals. At this time Bentley’s enemies were endeavouring to oust him
from his professorship. It was insinuated that his project was a mere
pretext, to be abandoned when it had answered his temporary purpose of
diverting the public mind from his personal misconduct. To these
suspicions he added force by the confession, in excuse for certain marks
of haste in a paper drawn up, not as a specimen of his critical powers,
but simply as an advertisement, that the proposals were drawn up one
evening by candle-light. Middleton followed up his blow by ‘Further
Remarks:’ the publication of the Testament was suspended, nor was it
ever carried into effect. That it was stopped by Middleton’s pamphlet,
is an error countenanced by numerous writers of the time, but denied by
Dr. Monk, who says that the discontinuance certainly was not owing to
Middleton’s attack. He doubts indeed whether Bentley ever looked into
the tract. A speech of his to Bishop Atterbury shortly after its
appearance is quite in character: he “scorned to read the rascal’s book;
but if his Lordship would send him any part which he thought the
strongest; he would undertake to answer it before night.” In 1726, his
Terence was published with notes, a dissertation concerning the metres,
which he termed Schediasma, and, strangely placed in such a work, his
speech at the Cambridge commencement in 1725. The sprightliness and good
temper of this short but eloquent oration is in strong contrast with his
controversial asperity: it breathes strong affection for the university,
from which body a stranger might suppose that he had received the
kindest treatment. But even this edition of the polished and amiable
comedian was undertaken in a spirit of jealousy and resentment against
Dean Hare, a former friend and rival editor, who had in truth deserved
his anger, by availing himself of information derived from Bentley in an
unauthorized and unhandsome manner. The notes throughout are in caustic
and contemptuous language, with unceasing severity against Hare, not
indeed in that violent strain of abuse which has so often marked the
warfare of critics, but with cool and sneering allusions without the
mention of the proper name, under the disparaging designation of
_Quidam, est qui_, or _Vir eruditus_. Not content with this revenge,
Bentley undertook to anticipate Hare in an edition of Phœdrus, which is
characterized by Dr. Monk as a “hasty, crude, and unsupported revision”
of the text of that author; in which the rashness and presumption of his
criticisms were rendered still more offensive by the imperious
conciseness in which his decrees were promulgated. Hare, on the
contrary, had long been preparing his edition: his materials were
provided and arranged, and he retaliated in an _Epistola Critica_,
addressed to Dr. Bland, head-master of Eton. The spirit of the epistle
is personal and bitter; and while it undoubtedly had its intended effect
in exposing Bentley, it is not creditable either to the temper or to the
consistency of its author.